Ah, the forerunner. iTunes gets a lot of credit here: It's a great program for managing podcasts, aside from some minor quibbles (automatically unsubscribing you after several missed downloads, for example). The iPod also offers passive bookmarking, and the Touch is great for video podcasts, which you can delete immediately after watching. You can also update podcasts on-the-fly if you're connected to WiFi, and there are three listening speeds for spoken word content (which includes podcasts).